If I had a hammer

                Wherever did I get the idea that one should use the “right tool for the job?” This is so stuck in my mind I think it’s in my bones. My father. Must have been. From when I was tiny and would wander down to the basement to see what he was doing on a Saturday or Sunday morning. And later in shop class in high school when we made foot stools and note pad holders for our mothers out of soft, broad grained pine.

                Here at the school just about everyone has been bent on teaching me that any tool can be used in place of any other for almost any job. Why do we even look for a hammer to do a hammer’s job when there are so many rocks lying about our feet? Or a chunk of steel on the floor where it’s been cut from a length that went into making rejas. Just pick one up and bang away. A thigh bone were it available? Of course. And there’s that hot breath on my shoulder telling me that Neanderthal times are closer here than one might think. I don’t touch mirrors for fear I might find one with a liquid surface and lose a finger in it. I’ve learned you can’t trust anything around here. Not caring what the end product looks like opens the gates allowing a flood of possibilities. The crash and bash school of woodworking works just fine. And, true, I don’t know a thing.

                So, you can tell that I’ve been to the shop with my students. The shop is an amazing place. They do welding there as well as woodwork, often at the same time and in the same space. I’ve learned that if one does not care if ones hearing is damaged, one does not need hearing protection, saving as much as 5 dollars on the pair and heaven knows how much hassle keeping track of them. Same for eye protection. The table saw, an ancient affair where the blade is not raised or lowered but the table itself, hinged at the back, is lifted and blocked in the front to expose more or less of the blade. The fence, bent, is moved toward and away from the blade by loosening two clamps and sliding it. The set-up is such it’s almost impossible to get the fence parallel to the blade. The pinched wood flies across the shop. The smell of scorched wood hangs in the air. It’s a pleasant, sweet smell. I’ve come to like it. And the blue haze reminds me of our living room on Long Island when I was growing up, the smoke coming from my father’s pipe dividing the room in half horizontally: blue smoke from about 4 feet to the ceiling, clear air from the floor up to that nearly perfect plane. In the kitchen the only time that happened was when someone left the toaster on and went into the next room. In the kitchen that was a bad thing. In the Living room it was a normal thing…any Saturday or Sunday afternoon and every evening.

                The switch for the saw is located across the room. You have to leave the saw (running) and climb over stacks of, most recently, bags of Portland cement, to get to it. Should you slip and fall back into the running saw…? Well, that problem is easily and commonly managed: we just don’t think about it. How simple. How could I have missed these simple solutions all these years? I certainly have learned a lot about wood working here in the DR.

                A while ago some students and teachers came down from Paul Smiths College in upstate New York. The school set about building three tent platforms. We had some moldy wood that, remarkably, had not rotted away (though it was stained black and was slippery to handle leaving anything that touched it black) and some 4 X 4’s and went to work. The Paul Smiths teachers and I found ourselves just standing back while our students and some of the school staff slammed away at making the platforms. Per the usual way these things are done, It was crooked, un-flat, ugly and wobbly but finished in the time allotted. The students learned nothing about making it “right” whatever that means—sure I don’t know anymore—or making it “well.” I still have some idea of what that might mean and I’m holding on to it like a person newly cast into a wild sea—too far out for rescue—holds onto a life ring.

                I have made a small contribution, though we’ll see just where it goes. I think nobody quite knows what to do with it yet. I found—on the Makita website—their manual for their table saw. We actually have one in the shop. The motor’s burned up and nobody’s gone to the trouble to either replace it or try to repair it. I actually turned the saw on its side and nearly got in there with a screwdriver to remove the motor to have a look but the better part of me, perhaps a little bird perched on my shoulder, whispered that I should keep my mitts out of it and I set the saw back on its base leaving well enough alone. I don’t need the extra work. The manual has a prominent section on both shop and tool safety and the manual is written in three languages: English, French and Spanish. I pulled the safety charla out of the manual and interleave the English and Spanish. The school is bi-lingual so, this way, anyone reading either language will have the other both above and below the entry if interested…assuming anyone is actually interested in safety. It is at least a novel idea. My grand idea, here, is for the students to make placards (in both languages…it’s about time things appeared in English in the school so that students can actually become familiar with the language, but that a topic for another time) and post them in the shop here and there, hopefully near the appropriate tool.

This is the fellow, the jointer. It's a Jet, as we can see and might not be all that bad, but the knives are dull. That little pile of chips (dark brown) on the floor? They were beaten, not sliced, off the wood. I know. I made them. I have a (small) dream: to fix the shop. This machine has a stop switch...which has been broken since long before I got here. It's been wired around so that, now, the machine starts when you plug it in. Stop it? Why would you ever want to do that? Emergency? Never happens. The shop steward lost two fingers in this machine. I can only imagine. When I used it the vibration of the piece I was running over the cutter was so great it made my had burn and nearly took the wood out from under my hand. New knives cost $20 US. I'd have to buy the 4 mm hex wrench to install them, of course, b/c good luck finding anything in this mess (nobody else can, not the shop steward or anyone else who works here.) So, why don't I? B/c I'd be spending my own money, making the new knives a gift, and that's not the point. What I have to do is convince the higher-ups (one of whom I'm not talking to anymore) to spend the money to fix the machine...and many others in the shop. But, ah, they never needed those tools, anyway. Just look at what they can do without them. A hammer? Around here someplace. Saw it just last week. It was on the table somewhere over there. Could be someone took it down to recinto dos. Ask David.

                Another thought is to get a huge grant somehow and make the shop a professional shop. Right now we have 5 table saws, only the most dangerous of which works (see picture.) I figure it this way: the school is trying to find things to make they can sell to help support the shop. The school and the ministry of environment and natural resources is all about trees: tree identification, appreciation and forest management. I want to teach the students many things including giving them the experience of making something well and that is also beautiful. We’ll need sharp tools to do that and a safe environment in which to do it all. And I want to teach safety. The shop, currently, is a disaster just waiting to eat some student’s fingers or whole hand. I also would like to get the Portland cement, for example, and the welding out of the shop: safety, again. It’s a dream. My bet is it won’t happen. It just goes too much against the grain. And my work through Peace Corps is not to gift them things like a new shop but to help develop capacity. They have to want the new shop and be willing to work toward making it happen.

                I’ve witnessed horrifying (to me) practices around the table saw. Such as students encouraged to “help” the shop steward to saw long, and even shorter, pieces by standing at the out-feed side of the saw and help by pulling the wood through the saw. Wow. When I saw that, I didn’t know where to begin. At first I couldn’t think of anything to say. I kept thinking (my Peace Corps training coming to the fore,) “What would be the culturally appropriate thing to say?” I don’t think I have figured that out. I wore hearing protection, then shared it with the students and plugged my ears with my fingers when the saw was running. They began copying me and expressed a preference for using the hearing pro. That surprised me and—and here I disarm myself a bit—pleased me.